I believe almost everyone I know has done this at least once in their lives — tried to lose some weight. And everyone I know who has done it never said it was easy. Some have even failed, including me!

After I gave birth to my son, I unfortunately didn’t lose all the weight I gained during the pregnancy. I didn’t even get close to my weight before the pregnancy. So I tried all the hacks that used to work for me, but they weren’t effective anymore. I knew age played a big role in it, so I had to start doing things “the hard way” (which is probably “the normal way” for most people). I turned to the internet and found that the fad diets and the calorie deficit stuff are quite mendokusai, so I wanted to try the basics first — eat a balanced meal, drink lots of water, exercise and get enough sleep everyday. They looked easy! Easy-peasy!

Drinking lots of water and getting enough sleep didn’t require much effort, but, exercising did! It was so hard to fit it in my schedule coz “life” took priority — too busy with work and family, which resulted to exhaustion by the end of the week. So on weekends, I just wanted to rest whenever I had time for myself. Then the pandemic happened, and I was fortunate that even after the first State of Emergency was lifted, my company was flexible and allowed us to continue working from home. So without my commute time, I was able to fit exercising (dancing) in my everyday schedule. Finally on the road to losing weight!

But the next and the biggest challenge was eating a balanced meal, in Japan, where there’s a ton of good fried and carbo-loaded food! I did try to resist them, but I love ramen, yakiniku (with rice), karaage, cakes and more. I was still indulging in them sometimes, so the exercise I was doing was just cancelling off the extra calories I was getting from the meals… D’oh!

I was struggling and trying to figure out what to do next when I got pregnant again. I thought to just give up coz I knew I’ll gain weight no matter what, but to my surprise, eating hospital food = balanced meals, everyday for two months made me lose weight despite the growing belly and baby. It wasn’t my choice, but hey, I finally lost weight! It’s a relief to know that the basics do work and I don’t need to try the more complicated fad diets. But now the question is, will I be able to continue once I’m out of the hospital… (I can hear my husband and friends saying “muri!”)

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*mendokusai (めんどくさい, Japanese), too lazy, can’t be bothered/troubled, (something/someone) is a pain
*yakiniku (焼肉, Japanese), Korean style barbeque
*karaage (唐揚げ, Japanese), Japanese style deep fried chicken
*muri (無理, Japanese), impossible